Former Vice President Joe Biden said former President Obama told him in 2014 he would have made him president if he had the ability to appoint his successor.
The revelation is in his new memoir, Promise Me, Dad, in which Biden tackles his decision not to run for president, his struggles as he faced the death of his son, Beau; and the foreign crises in Iraq, Ukraine, and Central America that occurred while he was vice president.
While explaining the events that led up to his son’s death, Biden said that Obama would have made him president if he could.
“By late 2014, we were walking after lunch and Barack said: ‘Joe, if I had the power of appointment, I’d appoint you president,'” Biden told the New York Times.
According to the Times, Obama was subtly convincing Biden not to run in the 2016 election.
Biden talked about other pressures he faced in the decision of running for President.
“If I were to say ‘I am not going to run,’ in the face of all this data that’s coming in saying, you can do it,” Biden said. “If I said that, everybody would have known there was something wrong with Beau. I would have violated my commitment to him to keep it a secret.”
Biden’s book is set to be published on Nov. 14 of this year.
